Trial by Trickery

The Queen v Scott Watson

New Zealand's most blatantly dishonest prosecution

Introduction

R v Watson is the legal description of perhaps New Zealand’s
most infamous murder case: a prosecution involving a 5 month police inquiry
in1998, a three month trial in 1999, and an Appeal against Conviction
in 2000, all involving the blatant deceiving of the public by high-ranking
police and legal officials.

The case is infamous because it wasn’t a genuine
murder investigation, trial and appeal at all. It held the country’s
attention for two and a half years, but what the public didn’t know
was that it was a two and a half year fraud on the part of the Crown figures
who controlled it. By the use of lies, misinformation, and false argument,
the jury’s verdict, and public opinion, was effectively moulded
within and without the courtroom, from the beginning of the enquiry by
the Police, through false information knowingly advanced by the prosecution
in court, and through the support of the trial judge who instructed the
jury to vote 'Guilty'. It was later confirmed and sealed by three judges
of the Court of Appeal with an equally false appeal judgment. As a result
a man was convicted of two murders and is in prison for the rest of his
life for one reason only: none of those entrusted by the state with the
task of uncovering the truth and administering justice in the case bothered
with either truth or justice.

These are not just wild accusations. They were first
advanced indirectly in the 2003 Television One documentary Murder
On The Blade? and may now be publicly stated with impunity,
since in three years none of those so accused in the film has challenged
them. The accused include the most prominent of prosecuting QCs, the longest
serving High Court Judge (now deceased), a policeman now all but of the
highest rank, a judicial civil servant all but of the highest rank, and
three appeal judges: the then President of the Court of Appeal, his successor
as President, and a third judge of the Supreme Court.

The book Trial by Trickerygoes beyond the film
to describe the Judicial system’s fakery directly and in meticulous
detail. The fakery involves all of the august figures alluded to above.
Just as none challenged the assertions of the film, no-one has challenged
the book’s claims either. So the book’s claims are not only
undeniable, they have not been denied!

The basic facts:
On New Year's Eve 1997, young holiday-makers Ben Smart and Olivia Hope
disappeared from a party at a seaside resort, and were last seen boarding
a mystery yacht with a mystery man. Five months later 26-year old Scott
Watson was arrested and convicted of their murders. He is now serving
a life sentence.

Is Watson guilty? Not according to the evidence. The
evidence says ‘innocent’, emphatically. It says – emphatically
– that Scott Watson is in prison because the key evidence was not
identified and presented to the court by the only people who all along
knew what it was – the Crown Prosecutors.

Instead the Prosecutors misrepresented and misquoted the facts, the evidence
and the arguments in court, over and over and over again.

Why? Were they just playing a game - the game of law?
Did they view the destruction of a man’s reputation, life and liberty
as their prize for winning a competition? Until the judicial system addresses
the questions raised in the book, the answers to these questions must
be ‘yes’.

The film and the book:
The award-winning feature-length film Murder On The Blade?
addresses the issue of Scott Watson’s guilt or innocence. When it
played on Television One in November 2003 it reduced, from 59% to 44%,
the number of New Zealanders who think Watson guilty.
Now comes Trial by Trickery, the book, the sequel to the film. It looks
beyond Watson’s guilt or innocence to expose the appalling story
of how a jury's verdict was acquired by the Crown. It’s a story
of judicial incompetence, tunnel vision, misinformation and preconception.
It will convince every reader that the guilty verdict should be applied
not to the accused man but to the ‘System’ itself.

Trial by Trickery uncovers, step by step, the mechanisms
that led first to the annihilation of a transparently innocent man’s
reputation, and then inexorably to his wrongful prosecution and conviction.
It identifies and tracks constant misinformation first fed to the public
during the police inquiry, then to the jury during the trial and then
to the public again in the judgment of the Court of Appeal. It exposes
the manipulations of advocacy in the adversarial system of law and turns
the tables on all of Scott Watson's accusers, from the police to the Court
of Appeal, to make them the accused. It asks if the outcome of the actions
of the police, the prosecutors and even the judges, were intended or the
result of utter incompetence. Finally it asks:

'Is this justice, New Zealand style?'

Anyone who was disturbed by the film will be dumbfounded by the book and
its revelations about the way justice is applied, apparently routinely,
in New Zealand.

Keith
Hunter
Author and publisher of Trial By Trickery and
producer and director of Murder On The Blade?

“The facts presented here illustrate not only the unfairness of my son’s trial but the demonisation process which occurred in the months leading up to it. Will the justice system take note of this book and act?
...‘J’accuse!”